Faculty members of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism did a lot more than lie on the beach reading pulp fiction this past summer. Many of them were engaged in significant journalistic work. Here’s a roundup of their projects, travels, awards, and grants over the past few months.

Lisa Armstrong (Adjunct Faculty, Craft of Journalism) spent time reporting in Haiti under a grant she received in April from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The focus of her work, which has been featured on the Pulitzer Center’s “Untold Stories” blog, has been how Haitians affected by HIV/AIDS have fared.

Amanda Aronczyk (Radio Instructor, Broadcast News Writing & Production) worked on a one-hour radio documentary on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It’s hosted by Kurt Andersen and is for WNYC/PRI’s national arts show, Studio 360. It includes interviews with filmmaker James Ivory, artist Maira Kalman, Stephen Colbert, historian Joseph Ellis, writer Jamaica Kincaid and more.

Juan Manuel Benítez (Adjunct Faculty, Broadcast News Writing & Production) received the 2010 “EL Award,” a recognition given annually by El Diario La Prensa to the most outstanding men in the tri-state area’s Latino community.

Jeremy Caplan (Adjunct Faculty, Interactive Journalism) won a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Poynter Institute. In addition to helping run a training boot camp this summer at Poynter for 19 emerging journo entrepreneurs from around the country, he began working on a series of columns for Poynter about entrepreneurial journalism.

Visiting Associate Professor Prue Clarke (International Reporting, Radio, Craft) launched New Narratives, an innovative project training women journalists in Africa. The Goldman Sachs-backed pilot kicked off in Liberia in August and quickly had a big impact with four front page stories in Liberia’s leading newspaper. Several government initiatives have begun in response to the reporting. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof twittered the project’s first report.

Susan Farkas (Adjunct Faculty, Broadcast News Writing & Production) co-produced a 24-minute documentary for United Nations TV about the first case heard by the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal. It aired on CUNY TV over Labor Day weekend and was sent out to broadcasters around the world.

Associate Professor Adam Glenn (Interactive Journalism) served as managing editor/social media for the Carnegie-Knight News21 project, “Brave Old World: Aging in America.” It was his fifth year in various roles at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism-based newsroom, part of a larger nationwide initiative involving a dozen universities and nearly 100 young journalism fellows. In addition, Adam maintained a social network for entrepreneurial journalists via the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, and consulted on social media and search engine optimization for Environment 360, an award-winning web site published out of Yale University. He also served as a judge for the SAJA Awards sponsored by the South Asian Journalists Association, and as a screener for annual Online Journalism Awards sponsored by the Online News Association.

Associate Professor Sandeep Junnarkar (Interactive Journalism) helped run the judging for the SAJA Awards sponsored by the South Asian Journalists Association. The winner of the Daniel Pearl Award was Adam Ellick of The New York Times for Class Dismissed and A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey. He also oversaw the SAJA Reporting Fellowship Program, which offers up to $20,000 a year to journalists, for the following pieces: Pakistanis Seek Answers to Water Supply Problems, Pakistani Women Make Community, Income Through Art, and Insidebayarea.com: Bhutan: A Journey from Conflict.

Professor Frederick Kaufman (Feature Writing) wrote the cover story, “The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It,” for the July issue of Harper’s magazine. You can download a PDF version from his web site, AmericanStomach.com. Here he discusses it on Bloomberg News.

Arlene Lebe (Adjunct Faculty, Radio Instructor) produced a 10-part series for CBS Radio News that on July 31 received first prize in the long-form category from the National Association of Black Journalists. Titled “2009:The Breakthrough Year, Courage, Commitment and Celebration,” the series done for Black History Month included reaction to the election of Barack Obama from Maya Angelou and others, and interviews with the widow of Jackie Robinson, opera singer Jessye Norman, NAACP President Ben Jealous as the nation’s oldest civil rights organization celebrated its 100th anniversary, a Vietnam soldier who came home to a New Jersey city where the battle lines were racial, and children in the Birmingham Church where decades ago a Klan bomb took the lives of three little girls.

David Lewis (Adjunct Faculty, Craft of Journalism) received a grant from the Playboy Foundation to support post-production and distribution of his upcoming documentary, tentatively entitled “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step.” It’s a profile of journalist, jazz writer, and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff. The award came through the Foundation’s Social Change Documentary Film program, which has historically focused on first amendment and free speech issues. “Pleasures” has been in production for three years, and has received support from the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation as well as numerous other family foundations and individual contributors.

Professor Paul Moses (NYC Government and Politics) won the 2010 Catholic Press Association Book Award for history for “The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace” (Doubleday, 2009). Also, Brooklyn College named him 2010 Alumnus of the Year.

Yoruba Richen (Adjunct Faculty, Video Documentary) premiered her film “Promised Land” in South Africa in August at the Encounters Film Festival. It screened in Johannesburg and Cape Town and afterwards, she participated in a panel with government officials and landless citizens about the state of land reform in South Africa. The panel was sponsored by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of Western Cape. “Promised Land” will be shown at a number of film festivals across the country this fall. In New York, it will appear at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music (BAM) on Sunday, September 26th at 4:30 p.m.

Associate Professor Geanne Rosenberg (Legal and Ethical Issues) organized the panel at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) annual conference, “Journalism Schools As News Providers: Challenges and Opportunities”. She also moderated the panel “Grappling with Legal Risks.” The event included introductory remarks by Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation and closing comments by Susan King of the Carnegie Corporation. Among the panelists: Harvard Law School’s Citizen Media Law Project Director David Ardia, Poynter President Karen Dunlap, New York Times Attorney George Freeman, University of Minnesota Law and Ethics Professor Jane Kirtley, Columbia Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lemann, USC Annenberg School Director Geneva Overholser, Dean Steve Shepard, and University of Colorado-Boulder Journalism Dean Paul Voakes.

Bob Sacha (Multimedia Guest Editor, Interactive Journalism) created a short film for the Soros Foundation about its work in New Orleans, “Change from Within: Three Stories from New Orleans.” He also traveled to Ukraine and Cambodia working on a series of short films about pain that will be released later this year. In between he stopped off in Istanbul to teach a talented group of young photojournalists from the former Soviet Republics about audio storytelling and creating audio slideshows.

Professor Bernard L. Stein (Opinion Writing, News Service) took part in a panel discussion at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) convention in Denver in August. The discussion entitled “Into the mean streets: Lab community newspapers take on tough neighborhoods” showcased the papers he founded, the Mott Haven Herald and The Hunts Point Express in the Bronx. He joined faculty members from the University of North Carolina and North Carolina Central, who were inspired by the CUNY papers to found the Durham Voice, and by faculty from UC Berkeley and LaSalle, who provide student stories on under-served communities to a local publication.

Associate Professor Steve Strasser (Craft of Journalism, Editing) did a study on global practices of licensing journalists for the Center for International Media Assistance in Washington D.C.

Dody Tsiantar (Adjunct Faculty, Craft of Journalism) spent the summer in Greece, covering the country’s debt crisis for Fortune.com–and taking in the sun as well!

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